Write A Child’s Story
This is ‘the story of a child’, not necessarily a story for children’s story
Tips
Children are adventurous. They are open. They are surprisingly insightful. They see the world in bright colors, not moral greys. They are, in other words, great hero material.
Children are inexperienced in the world and therefore, generally, not paralyzed by potential consequences. This makes them great hero material AND great villain material (
Lord Of The Flies).
Around the age of ten children are aware of themselves, have some empathy for others, a growing facility to play with the more sophisticated language they hear from adults, and a fairly well developed ability to survive without an adult’s help. They are developing an awareness of their own personality and its affect on others and their ability to choose what they do with that. This is why so many great child-characters are written at this pre-teen stage. Consider making your protagonist this age
If you don’t have much exposure to children right now, consider writing a story in flashback, where your older character tells the story of themselves as a child (as Rob Reiner did in
Stand By Me).
Published on May 27, 2013 21:00